Three-month paid summer internships are up on @romtoronto.bsky.social careers page along with some other contract positions!
#MuseumWork #Internships
www.rom.on.ca/work-with-us...
Our collection of longbows and arrows are unlike anything anywhere else in the world, but what can they tell us about archery in Tudor England?
Find out with our online talk on Saturday 14th March at 14.00 GMT
I was in at the ROM yesterday and was glad to see the Safavid tile panel was still up!
I suppose the present carpark would have been the sea in those days! Good times!
Portraits of Vladimir Putin, Bashar al-Assad (Syria), Ali Khamenei (Iran), and Hassan Nasrallah (Hezbollah) in Aleppo, Syria, in 2017.
In ancient times Gaza was the port at the end of the Incense Road, bringing frankincense and myrrh from Yemen to the Mediterranean. This map shows Nabataean sites which controlled the land route, and the Red Sea route through Ayla (Aqaba).
Pity.
As someone who has written on the ancient history of indigo for awhile now? This is exciting. archaeologymag.com/2026/02/olde...
The Gaza area has been on a coastline for hundreds of millions of years, once on the boundary between Pangaea and the Tethys Ocean. The sea-level has risen and fallen, each time a new beach was created. So ancient cemented sands run in ridges parallel to the coast, creating the present landscape.
Portland Street.
Plaque on Portland Street.
Portrait of Millais.
John Everett Millais was born on Portland Street in Southampton on 8 June 1829. He was baptised in All Saints’ Church on the corner of Southampton High Street and East Street in the December of that year. Most of his early childhood was spent in Jersey.
1/5
Happy Year of the Horse to all who observe the Lunar Calendar! I could post a beautiful antiquity, but instead here is my favourite fictional horse: Maximus!
I have been reading about the history of Gaza lately. Apparently they minted very early coins from the mid-5th century based on the Athenian silver drachm, but with the bearded head of their own deity rather than Athena. Unfortunately the ROM doesn't have one so I stole this image from the internet!
Obverse side of a bronze coloured tetradrachm coin with the bust of Roman Emperor Probus, facing to the right. He crowned with a laurel wreath. Dated to 278 CE.
Reverse side of a bronze coloured tetradrachm coin with a standing eagle facing to the right with wings arrayed.
I have been busy photographing #Roman coins minted in Alexandria, #Egypt in the collection @romtoronto.bsky.social This one of Probus is dated to 278 CE. I like the standing eagle on the reverse. Browse the whole series online here: collections.rom.on.ca/search/910.2...
#MuseumWork #Numismatics
I was recently sent some 17th century Iranian Safavid tile images that are of the type in a book published by Lisa Golombek and I last year. Most of them we had already seen, but one added the poop-deck to our ship!
Both of my daughters play Sims, so I thought I would give it a go. I made a Sims version of the monastery in Syria where I did fieldwork for some years, Deir Mar Musa.
An interview with my friend Fr. Jihad Youssef at Deir Mar Musa, in Syria.
religionunplugged.com/news/mar-mus...
Trying to pin down this North Elmham pottery at the ROM. This group is mostly Thetford Ware, 3 Ipswich Wares, & 3 St. Neot's ware. The latter has shell (you can see it in this photo). Ipswich ware is supposedly grittier than Thetford Ware. Time to break out the microscope.
#MedievalSky #Archaeology
It snowed. Yay.
Tricky working out the numbers on the North Elmham pottery sometimes. I think this is NEP 67 102. I assume 102 is what they call a feature in the publication, what we called a context number in my day (70's-80's). Unfortunately this number is not in the publication!
🏺 #MedievalSky #Archaeology
Working on the North Elmham medieval pottery from England at the ROM and found this guy. Seems a merry sort. 🏺
#MedievalSky #Archaeology
Reclaim our heritage? Is he talking about Windscale? The nuclear industry gives scientists a bad name.
This really is not natural. The trees know when the winter is coming, they drop their leaves before the first snows. Usually there is enough time to clear the leaves before the snows come. Things are messed up.
I think I'm fatigued and leaning about myself. This was right after a field season in Syria!
MEN! Have you thought about the Roman Empire today? 🏺
My pic of 2005.
I follow someone that posts historical photos and stories about my hometown, Southampton in England. Recently, he posted a story about a man that was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in 1939, just before WW2. In his defence he had said that Mr. Hitler had been "on his nerves" of late.
George V
Italy WWI Group of British Sailors at the Vatican
So many moustaches...I'm surprised that there aren't more beards. Apart from the influence of the King, surely some of these men were ex-Navy? But then I googled for sailors in 1914 and got no beards again!
I have just written a science-fiction story in which the main character has the ability to create circular kilometer-wide "cities". Today I discovered Nördlingen. However, this German city was built in a meteor crater, not by alien technology! 📚🪐 #BookSky
medium.com/the-kraken-l...
I thought I had better get a pic of these fuchsias before the frost hits tonight! 🌱 #FlowerReport
Nice use of satellite imagery to reveal the destruction of cultural heritage.
www.cnn.com/2025/10/23/u...
I think we can all sympathise with Douglas Walker, a 44-year-old fruit salesman of no fixed abode, who was charged with being drunk on Havelock Road on 26 August 1939. Two days later he pleaded guilty and said: “I think Mr Hitler had got on my nerves a bit during the day. I had certainly had a few.”
